Blood and Smoke
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Kaito is blood and the smell of cigarette smoke.


**Title: **Blood and Smoke  
**Rating: **PG-13  
**Universe:** Air Gear  
**Theme/Topic:** Smoking  
**Character/Pairing/s:** lightly IkkixAkito, Kaito in spirit  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** No major ones I can imagine. Akito and Kaito back story as revealed in the anime, at most.  
**Word Count:** 1,274  
**Time:** Lost count.  
**Summary:** Kaito is blood and the smell of cigarette smoke.  
**Dedication:** requested by keepthion on my rare fandoms meme. Last fic I owe!  
**A/N: **I never thought I'd write Ikki like this, but I guess there's something about him that lends to a natural kind of profundity that comes with his innate simplicity. Or something. Maybe I just went completely OOC with him, I dunno. XD;;  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

Ikki noticed how Akito sometimes inhaled deep when the smell of cigarettes was in the air, a brief, lingering look on the smaller boy's face that seemed a lot like memory.

Not bad or good ones necessarily, just the ones that were there, irreplaceable and forever bound to his heart, in his blood.

"It's not good for you," Ikki said on occasion, shrugging at the little guy and not saying anything else either way because it was his life and he could live it as he damn well pleased.

"Niisan smoked when he read to me before bed," Akito told him one day. "Sometimes I remember that. He also smoked when he locked me up, when he hit me, when we took walks together and when he made dinner."

Ikki could tell it was a jumbled sort of nostalgia full of good and bad all intermingled, but either way it was a part of who Akito was and that was that. Ikki would never like Kaito just because guys with a few too many screws loose in their heads tended to offset him, but he was surrounded by so many of them on a daily basis now that he supposed the mere memory of another one wasn't anything huge to add onto his list.

"Do you miss him?" he asked, and stuck his hands in his pockets, watching kids run by laughing and eating ice cream from the shop right across the street from the park.

"I don't know," Akito said honestly, looking a little lost.

It was enough to prompt Ikki to reach out and cuff the smaller boy on the head. "It's not a complicated question, dumbass. Either you do or you don't."

Akito looked sheepish. "I guess I do, then."

Ikki sighed. "Blood is like that, I guess," he supposed. Something that bound you to someone else no matter what, physically or in memory; in the smell of cigarettes or during walks through the park.

"He's not a bad person," Akito said, and his voice softened slightly. "Sometimes I think… there are two parts to him. One that's a good big brother and another that isn't."

Ikki allowed something like a grin at that. "Guess you two really are related then."

Akito laughed a little. "The smell just makes me think of niisan."

"Well, I guess you gotta remember your blood every now and again," Ikki conceded. "But uh, don't live in the past or something," he added, because it sounded profound. Sort of.

Akito beamed. "I don't!" he assured the other boy, and that look on his face was back, the one that made Ikki kind of inexplicably nervous. "It's just a breath of smoke."

"Well, okay."

"The rest of the time I'm thinking of Ikki!" Akito told him matter-of-factly, and grabbed hold of the taller storm rider's arm with both of his and resting his cheek against it.

Ikki twitched. "Oi," he warned, and grew uncomfortable under the gaze of those children running around. "Cut that out, will you? People are staring."

Akito smiled. "Ikki smells like the sky."

Ikki blinked. "The sky doesn't smell like anything." Pause. "I guess that's better than stinking."

"The sky smells like lots of things!" Akito insisted. "Like when it rains it smells…stormy. Or when it's cool it smells crisp. That's Ikki's smell."

"That so?"

"Yup!"

Ikki refrained from letting the other teen know that neither of those were _smells_ technically, mostly because he supposed he understood what Akito was getting at even if he was expressing it kind of weird. It wasn't a smell maybe, but rather, a feeling. Something that wasn't as ambiguous as the scent of cigarette smoke, foul and familiar all at the same time. Something different than what he'd known before, in that little cage with Kaito looming over him. Not better or worse. Just... different.

Not to be cliché or anything, but-- a breath of fresh air.

Ikki supposed if Akito got that from him, well… good. He was glad to help the smaller boy forget for a little while, to help him feel something new, try something new, see and hear and taste and touch something new, believe something new.

That wasn't to say you should forget the past though.

Sometimes you had to think about blood, about family. Things deep inside of you tied you there, to those things, inextricably. So it was good to remember them every once in a while, maybe for just as long as a puff of smoke lasted. A taste. A breath.

But then you had to move on, get on with your life-- feel, try, see, hear, taste, touch believe new things.

Ikki didn't like Kaito but he knew Kaito was an important part of Akito's life, an important part of who the smaller boy was. Blood tied up in the scent of acrid smoke and memories that were just hazy gray but still familiar somehow.

Fine.

Ikki could be the sky then, the wind, the air—another important part of Akito's life and who he was. Not anything as profound as blood maybe, but _life_ in his own way all the same, ever changing, always new and unique but somehow just as familiar too, just as inextricable.

"Ikki?"

He blinked when Akito's voice stirred him from his thoughts. "What?"

"You got quiet."

He grinned. "Maybe you were just talking too much."

Akito blinked. "Was I?"

"Nah. You want ice cream?"

The smaller storm rider blinked. "Really?"

Ikki rolled his eyes. "You act like you never had ice cream in the park before."

Akito pouted. "Well maybe I haven't!"

"Then we sure as hell better get some, huh?"

Akito's smile was dazzling as he leaned against Ikki's arm and looked up at him, happy. "I want vanilla."

Ikki snorted. "Like fuck. Try something new for once."

Akito pouted. "What if I hate it?"

"Then you hate it. How does triple berry fudge sundae sound?"

"Gross."

"Triple berry fudge sundae it is!"

"Ikki!!"

Ikki laughed and jogged off to order two cones of exactly that. And as it turned out, it was really rather good.

Even if Akito—little twerp—wouldn't admit it.

Well, that was fine too.

They finished their ice cream sitting side by side on a park bench watching those same obnoxious children—fingers now sticky with the remnants of their summer treat—as they ran around the playground and whooped and shouted and had the times of their lives.

On the bench next to them a man read the newspaper and smoked, and Akito breathed in deep for just a moment or two, before turning back to Ikki and asking if he'd push him on the swing.

"Sure," Ikki said, and they went to do just that.

Ikki knew he wasn't blood. He didn't share anything fundamentally profound like that with Akito, couldn't have his memory invoked with something as simple and commonplace as the dull gray odor of smoke from a cigarette.

Kaito's power would always be there between them, his memory running through the very core of Akito, the blood pumping through his veins. Inextricable.

And while Ikki didn't like the guy, he supposed that ultimately, he didn't mind because he understood.

Kaito would always be blood, would always be the thoughts that ran through Akito's mind whenever he smelled cigarettes and remembered the past.

Ikki would be air then, would fill Akito's lungs whenever he smiled and laughed and tried something new, whenever he looked to the future.

It wasn't too bad a deal, when Ikki thought of it that way.

Puffs of cigarette smoke always disappeared into the sky eventually, after all.

**END**


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